Poor Things Movie Review | The Fragility of the Male Ego

so I saw this movie over the weekend called poor things with Emma Stone and Mark Ruffo William defo it's a movie that touches on a lot of big fundamental questions about the human experience and ultimately it's a just a beautiful brilliant surrealist steampunk romantic comedy and it's a very female driven uh narrative as well but I wanted to focus on one Concept in this movie that is handled just incredibly and that's the fragility of the male ego and how a man who is appearing as seemingly the complete package can be so quickly undone by a woman's rejection and disinterest in him so I don't want to spoil the whole movie but just for a little bit of context we're introduced to this character called Bella who's this kind of Frankenstein creation she has an adult body but the mind of an infant and she's been reanimated by this mad scientist ins surgeon and she has to relearn all these essential sort of tasks and uh skills all over again so she have to learn to walk and talk and eat and so on and so forth and she lives in the early parts of the movie in this Mansion as part of this experiment and she's in a process of discovering discovering the world outside and also discovering herself and so as the movie progress she becomes increasingly interested in what's beyond the walls of this Mansion she's living in and at this time we're introduced to this lawyer Duncan wedderburn who is the ultimate womanizer he's a lush he's very charismatic and funny and just has a way about him he's very much that guy and he takes an immediate interest in Bella because she's just so bizarre and weird and odd it's she's like no woman that he's ever seen so Duncan asks Bella to go to Portugal with him on this trip that he's taking and initially Bella is just fascinated with Duncan because he represents sort of all these pleasures of the world that she has no no knowledge of and no experience with and he's so charming and interesting and so she quickly agrees and they go off to Lisbon for this sort of psychotic kind of sexcapade and she's asking him all these questions very interested and and just learning so much about the world through this experience and as this is happening Duncan is sort of increasingly becoming a little uncomfortable and even at one point sort of tells Bella you know don't fall in love with me because I'm not I'm not the guy you want to fall in love with you know sort of uh in that in the way that those types of men do and Bella though quickly outgrows Duncan and begins taking interest in other people in other ideas and Duncan doesn't know how to handle it because he's he's completely sort of confused by a woman that would not want to be with him and would not be interested in him and it really challenges his core identity and thus begins this kind of unraveling that that Duncan gun undergoes from sort of this most interesting man in the world type character to this sort of sad raving lunatic and he he actually ends up towards the end of the movie in an insane asylum sort of muttering to himself because throughout all his attempts and he attempts he tries to marry Bella he he goes on this cruise with her he traps her on this this cruise ship with him he does everything in his power to sort of attract her as she's pulling away and none of it works and she could not be be less interested in being with him and he just can't handle it as an idea there's this idea of the male ego you know in a quote that I think of is that a a man will call a woman fragile but there's nothing more fragile than a man's ego and the ego you know what is an ego it's it's a creation it's a performance it's a disguise to protect us from being hurt uh protect us from our own insecurities from being vulnerable and a man will often develop a a strong ego in response to insecurities and then that ego as anybody that any man that knows himself or any woman that knows a man uh that ego has to be continually strok and gratified so this is a classic pattern um where a man who's operating from his ego who's not in touch with his his true self and his his true desires he uses his Charisma and his his his intelligence his sense of humor uh to pull a woman in and and he often is appearing very charming and very confident and sort of swashbuckling and oftentimes that's successful that's actually very attractive and as it happens as as the woman pulls closer to him he develops sort of this a little bit of a disgust towards her he's he's because that ego always needs to be gratified as the woman comes closer to the man in this in this pattern then the man begins to push her away and that may happen by him insulting her or telling her she's insecure or crazy or whatnot there's this great scene in the movie and Bella is still interested in Duncan Maybe more so than he would prefer and he says she's become the very thing I hate a grasping succulus lover and this is very much sort of the peak of that ego attraction so we've attempted to attract the woman the woman is now attracted to us and then we we we couldn't be bothered with it and the interesting thing about this is that as the woman then in response to that often pulls away then the ego will push in because the ego is always acting in opposition from to to something real that's happening and the ego will make an attempt if she if it feels that the woman is drifting away because that ego is very much about control and about possession and about gratification if it feels that the woman is pulling away then it'll make an attempt to reclaim her and if that attempt is is refused or rebuffed then the ego will will sort of start to melt down I get very frustrated and most of the time in this pattern the man will sort of just jump into another relationship where he can repeat that that attraction and then repulsion Dynamic and has doesn't have to deal with with any of the consequences but there are occasions where the man will stay fixated on the woman who rejects him him and then that that ego that performance that thegu will completely unravel and this is what happens to Duncan and so he becomes this version of himself that he could not even recognize I mean he goes from from basically the most Charming man in the universe to somebody who's who's homeless who's begging who's desperate who's pleading who's doing anything in his power just to get a moment of attention from Bella and when she doesn't give it he ends up muttering to himself all the way into an as Asylum and so this is a very the movie illustrates this very beautifully uh very very sort of comedically but we all know that we've all seen this pattern whether in ourselves or with friends where you know one instance is the man who has a girl friend who's sort of he's sort of mildly indifferent about but then out of the blue the woman decides to dump him to leave him and all of a sudden he goes from from this mild indifference to saying oh no no no no this woman she was the love of my life and I must do everything everything to get her back and if the woman remains indifferent if if those attempts at reconciliation are not answered then the ego gets even more frantic right and we've this is when we see men that call women 40 times in a day or they write some 15-page letter that's stained with their own tears and so on and so this is how the ego Works in one instance in relationship and I think it's important because there's always going to be tension between the masculine and The Feminine there's always this balance of control a man generally wants to control a woman to some degree maybe even dominate her and this can actually be a quite of attractive Dynamic if it's coming from a man's true strength if it's coming from a real sense of integrity and honesty and purpose if that's truly who he is but if it's coming from the ego which is the mask the disguise then the woman invariably will find a way to penetrate that ego and to test that ego and crack that ego a relationship always has a way of revealing to ourselves our true selves and when that ego cracks and it falls to the floor it will reveal a man that is the furthest thing from confidence and strong and charismatic it will reveal somebody who is deeply insecure who is constantly worried about what other people think about him who is sort of by their very nature obsessed with appearing as something and other people believing them as that thing while having no ability or awareness to actually be that thing and I'd say for any man out there that's listening to this because quite frankly I see myself I think many men would see themselves in this Duncan character consider it an opportunity if you're noticing yourself in the cycle where you're very attracted to a woman you pull her in and she becomes very attracted to you you're successful at that many men are successful at that but but then you something switches and you start telling yourself all these types of stories about oh my gosh she's just too much I didn't know what I was getting into you know she's totally different than I thought whatever the case may be she's too clingy um she always wants to be around me I don't get it uh you ought to have a take a long look in the mirror you have to take a long look in the mirror and you need to take a step back and realize that how you are showing up to relationship is likely inauthentic and is more related to Your Ego than who you truly are and and there you have to get in contact with who you truly are so you can be in relationship authentically and honestly so I encourage you to go see this movie it's absolutely incredible it's it's the one of the funniest movies I've I think I've ever seen it's definitely my favorite movie of 2023 if not ever uh but I just leave you with that that idea and and hopefully you get some value out of that

Channel: BHBC

Views: 4,284

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Id: QhVUE4FGW-s

Length: 12min 10sec (730 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 02 2024